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Landmark meeting between China and Japan

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held an ice-breaking meeting on 10 November 2014, on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific conference in Beijing, following more than two years of deep tensions over an island dispute.

The spat between China and Japan over uninhabited East China Sea islands raised concerns of a military confrontation between Asia’s two largest economics. China was also angry over what it sees as effort by Japan to play down its brutal 20th century invasion and occupation of China.

The meeting between Xi and Abe in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People was step towards gradually resuming political, diplomatic and security dialogues.

In that statement, Japan said it acknowledged differing views over the status of the islands, called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japan. China has long demanded that Tokyo acknowledge that the islands’ sovereignty is in dispute, something Japan has refused to do.

China and Japan have had poor relations for decades, rooted in Japan’s fears of China’s economic and political rise and Beijing’s sense of victimhood.